"When I bought my home in New Hampshire, I heard a strange rustling one night and, being new to rural life, asked my police chief the following morning, if it had turned out to be an intruder, whether I should have called him at home. "Well, you could," said Al. "But it would be better if you dealt with him. You're there and I'm not." That's the best advice I've ever been given."

With the exodus of so many liberal tax emigres from Massachusetts, New Hampshire is home to fewer of these 'understanding' police chiefs.

I would like to see some enterprising media type interview each of the bystanders at this slaughter, and probe them one by one as to their thoughts as they watched this go down.

Steyn is right. I will bet that a large number of them thought that the police would be there any minute to get this guy -- and they never came.

The thing that plays into this, I think is something that the military has always been aware of , but you rarely here it spoken of amongst civilians. A soldier (and similarly, a citizen), when faced with overwhelming violence, has to be taught to defend himself. It is rare to find an individual who instinctively strikes back. Especially if he is in a crowd, the individual watching violence approach instinctively freezes , and assumes a posture least likely to call attention to itself. It is the instinct of prey, and it happens so often on the battlefield amongst undertrained and underled troops that it is a truism.

Sentient reporters would recognize this as the behavior of the bystanders at that mall, and in seeking to understand it and explain it, would go a long way toward teaching us something about human nature.